E3 Begins Day 1

Wednesday, 7:44PM PTWell after all the lights go off, cacophonous sounds diminish, and the tartarean stampede of E3 goers leave, what is there to do? Many of the game companies offer private affairs where they have a more relaxed environment to continue promoting their merchandise. Often they rent out space in various locations throughout downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, etc. One such location is the famous Dodger Stadium home of the world renowned E3 Sony party usually held on the Thursday of that week.

There are producers, developers, PR agents, game publicists, journalist, online media/print/broadcast, can let down there hair and really talk about, off the record of course, anything game related. However not everyone can get into such an event. So where does everyone else go? Well Los Angeles has tons of places where tons of E3 goers attend. One such place is the Viper Lounge on Sunset Boulevard. Tonight they feature performances Hope, a sultry combo of Sade and Jill Scott and Pete Philly & Perquisite, a European group with a cool throw back to old school hip hop, with a twist of (acid or trip) Jazz, a classical sound, and really cool melodies.

Wednesday, 6:23PM PTWow! What a first day. Even as seasoned E3 veteran such as myself, attending since 1998, this year it was hard to choose where exactly to start. I finally settled with Sony's booth first. Well, more like, ran with the rest of the crowd more than 'settled'. While some of the walls in the Sony booth had "Playstation 3" emblazoned, I was kind of skeptical of some of the new titles such as Genji 2, and Sonic the Hedgehog. I started to think that these were just Playstation2 titles, until I picked up the silver controller. The controller looks very similar to the Playstation2 controller yet adds gyroscopic activity, Wi-Fi access and is lighter than the current controller. You really have to pick it up to believe it.

Warhawk, an action flight shooter for the PS3, was actually being played using only the gyroscope functionality, never touching the face buttons to fly the aircraft. Heavenly Sword can quickly be called "Goddess of War", until you actually see it in motion. Words cannot do the game justice. While it is a "hack and slash" type of game, so is God of War. If I could make one statement on this game it would be this: I thought I was watching a game cut scene the entire time gamers played their demo mission, it looked that great.

Ageia is an up and coming company which specializes in physics processing. This makes for a more realistic gaming experience. It's different from traditional graphics processors as this new technology solely focuses on the physics, and how objects behave and interact. So instead of a static animation for certain actions, like the same slam dunk in a basketball game, with this technology a dunk from under the basket will look different from a dunk made from even one foot away from the last one, just like real life.

Square-Enix showed us a few of their hottest upcoming titles. Final Fantasy 3 for the Nintendo DS finally completes the series in English for North America. Children of Mana for the Nintendo DS, is a beautifully drawn and detailed 2D action game. Final Fantasy: Dirge of Cerebus is their 1st foray into the world of 1st person shooters, and it handles the genre with skill and lots of style.

Wednesday, 1:44 PM PTA few months back there was a note sent out across the web regarding the female booth assistants/models that are more commonly known as "booth babes." The word was that any company with scantily clothed vixens' would be fined a fee. Now I don't know the specifics but I certainly am seeing these video game vixens' dressed as one of several video game female characters. I guess the rules were made to be malleable.

Wednesday, 1:19 PM PTSo America's Army is very interesting to say the least. It's not because of the amount of weapons you can choose from, the real life bullet physics, digitally scanned real life military personnel, or the array of vast military hardware. America's Army is all about the objective and team play

Wednesday, 10:01AM PTWhat's better than the first day of E3? Getting picked up by Dan Greenwalt Lead Designer of ForzaMotorsport 2 in a Lamborghini Gallardo is by far one of the best E3 experiences any can have.

The first installment of the game came out about a year ago in May 2005. Now Dan and his team are working on a new version of the game, which will be out for the 2006 holiday season. As Dan and I drove down to the E3 Conference located at the LA Convention Center, he explained to me that the new game will have 300 cars from 50 manufactures and 60 tracks with different environments. There are also 450 races in a career mode and also 100 events.Check GameCore in the following weeks for the full article.